So after my recent Christmas break addiction to computer games, I’ve once again sworn them off (for the most part) convinced that there are better things to do with my time. Of course I already know this, but once or twice a year I forget and spend all my spare time after Abby’s asleep playing games. This usually lasts for a week or two.

PSCB – Public Stem Cell Banking

It was actually a favor for my wife that drew me out of it again. She started up two blogs, one for the family and one for her long time goal of public stem cell banking. Not the controversial embryonic stem cells, but the umbilical ones that come from the baby’s umbilical cord after it’s been severed. Normally these cells just go to waste, but there are actually a few places that can collect them. These cells are just as useful as the embryonic cells, but it conveniently avoids all the controversy.

If you want to donate your stem cells for research or for others to use, it’s actually quite a laborious process and she wants to raise public awareness so that more people can do it. This started off with registering a domain for her and then putting up a site. Then we had to find a nice theme, get ready to play the SEO game, and start designing.

TheRobisons.org

Then I figured as long as I was putting my web developer hat on again, I might as well update the family site. My family isn’t the most techno-savvy, but I thought that after an entire year with no one posting new content it was probably time to rethink the site. Most of the family members had started up their own blogs, so now therobisons.org is a feed aggregator of sorts, grabbing content from everybody’s blogs and putting it in a central location. I grabbed the Post Titles only and the links push visitor’s back to the writer’s own blogs.Another look, more tweaking, no SEO for this site, and we’ve got another site up and running.

Benrobb.com

And for those of you actually on the site reading, you’ll notice a new look to my own site as well. This one probably consumed the most effort, but I’m happy with the outcome. I obviously didn’t do the theme myself, but there’s always the tweaking that has to happen to make everything look the way you want. Along the way I discovered that disabling the WP-Cache plugin does not turn off the plug-in and it continues to cache pages, but other than that, things went pretty smoothly.

It’s another right-side nav theme, which I used to really hate, but in my efforts to branch out, the last theme on the site had a right-side nav and it kinda grew on me. This one’s got a nice reddish-brown color and I’m a fan. Hope you like it to.

Freelancing

Then suddenly, my father-in-law contacts me and says he’s actually got two sites that need to be put together for two new businesses that he’s starting with a partner. They’ve already got contracts coming in for whatever it is (I’m not clear on that yet) and they need sites right away. They’re going to be pretty simple, and hopefully it’ll bring in a decent amount of extra funds for the help-ben-and-alison-buy-a-house fund. When it rains it pours I guess.